


Cracked

by sky_blue_hightops



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Blood Loss, Endeavour Morse Whump, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hospitals, Hurt Endeavour Morse, Hurt/Comfort, Parental Fred Thursday, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 15:00:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21017687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sky_blue_hightops/pseuds/sky_blue_hightops
Summary: Armed suspects and wayward detective constables don't mix well.





	Cracked

The brick walls of the buildings bordering the alley loomed over them, dark and uninviting. Very early morning light, soft and dim, lit their steps as Morse and Thursday carefully made their way to the crime scene, which was nothing more than several grotesque splatters of blood against the ground and the walls. It was before sunrise, the air still and thin, and Morse huddled deeper into his coat beside Thursday.

“Reports state that a gunshot was heard here around two to three A.M. last night, matching the victim’s cause of death, and a resident across the street claims he saw a man leave this alley around half-past two,” Morse informed him, leaning over to get a better look at the pattern of blood on the cobblestones.

“Any description of the suspect?” Thursday inquired. Morse shook his head.

“Just that he was about average height, and wore a dark coat. DeBryn says that the body showed signs of a struggle before death.”

Thursday noted the way Morse exhaled in frustration, and how his hand drifted towards his notebook pocket. “And what do you say?”

Morse glanced up at him, blue eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “I say that the way the bloodstains are arranged, it’s most likely that the victim was shot from a distance rather than at point-blank.” He rose to his feet, trailing his fingers over the drops of blood that had dried on the wall. “So the struggle must’ve occurred separately from the shooting. Not a robbery gone wrong, then. This must’ve been something the victim had anticipated, someone he knew to fight back against.”

Thursday nodded. He’d already done his scan of the scene, but there was nothing else to betray any details besides the blood split. “Jakes identified the victim as a florist from a few towns over; apparently, he was visiting for his brother’s college graduation. He has the family’s contact information should you want to follow up on that.”

Morse scoffed. “What kind of enemies would a florist have?” Thursday was inclined to agree with him. The victim was a pale-haired man in his late 20s, with thin hair and an even thinner frame. Thursday let the constable make another lap of the scene, trying to pick out any last clues, before gesturing for Morse to follow him back to the car. Morse nodded, turning to do so, before freezing and turning back around. “Wait, hold on-” His frown deepened, and he suddenly went quiet, studying the ground once more, even going as far as to drop to one knee beside something Thursday couldn’t make out.

“Everything alright-” Morse shushed him softly. Too softly. The action lacked sharpness and was very un-Morse-like, and it put Thursday on high alert. The younger man stared into the shadows at the deep end of the alley, shoulders tense, taking a few, light steps along an invisible trail something had left behind.

“He’s still here,” he breathed. “The suspect, he’s still here, he came back for something, there’s drag marks but they’re suddenly, like he was running out of time-”

There was a sudden movement in the shadows, a rustling, just as Thursday bit out an order - “Morse, behind me!” - and drew his gun. Barely a half-second later and a jarring crack echoed through the alley, the report of a handgun, followed by the sound of hastily-retreating footsteps. Both Thursday and Morse flinched, before the constable sprung into action.

“I’ve got him-!” Whatever else he would’ve said disappeared with Morse around the corner of the building, and Thursday cursed, running after them. How many  _ times _ had he told Morse to not run after armed suspects while unarmed himself? The metal of his gun was familiar in his hands, and he raised it as he turned the corner, ready for anything.

But the back alley was empty besides Morse himself, shaking with frustration. “I had him!” He turned on Thursday with a snarl. “I had him, he was right  _ there _ -”

“I called for backup, they’ll track him in a car. “ Thursday exhaled, glad Morse hadn’t tried to follow the suspect even farther, before fully taking in the younger man. “Alright, Morse?”

“I- I-” Thursday pressed a hand on his shoulder, and Morse seemed almost...confused, for a moment, leaning into the touch, still wrung tight with adrenalin but unmoving. The Morse he knew would be ready to follow, ready to seek out evidence, perhaps to double back on the path the suspect had taken, chatting Thursday’s ear off the entire time, but this Morse looked faint and pale, and worryingly so. This Morse’s hands fumbled clumsily with his coat, shaking badly, pulling back the dark fabric, and -

Thursday cursed. The white shirt underneath was stained red, blood spreading from a wound in Morse’s abdomen. The constable took one look at it and flinched, swaying against Thursday, fingers weakly tugging at the once-clean fabric. “Right, right-” He moved to take Morse’s arm over his shoulder, help him back to the car, but Morse stumbled backwards, tripping over his own heavy feet. “Hey, Morse- Morse!”

Morse went down hard, crumpling against the closest wall. Thursday dropped to his knees beside him, already pulling out his radio once more. “Man down, call for an ambulance-” He rattled off the cross roads, dropping the radio on the ground to press both hands down on the wound. “He shot you, that was right stupid of you, you know-” Morse looked up at him, eyes creased with pain.

“I didn’t...I didn’t notice-” And of course he hadn’t, because he’d been too caught up in chasing the suspect to realize there was a  _ hole in his side _ . Thursday kept one hand on the wound, pressed as firmly as possible, ignoring the slick warmth of his bagman’s blood between his fingers. The other hand he patted Morse’s cheek with, trying to keep him awake.

“Stay with me, lad, stay with me.” His hand left traces of blood on Morse’s cheek. Oh, there was so much blood, too much, staining his clean shirt, spilling onto the cobblestones below, and Morse already looked far too pale, all the fire and determination gone from his eyes, replaced with a hazy, unfocused look.

“The suspect, he-” Morse blinked, slurring. “Grey hair, light skin, t-thin-” He scrabbled at Thursday’s coat, desperate, before one hand settled on gripping the hem of Thursday’s sleeve. “He’ll still be nearby, he came back, back-”

“Shh, quiet now,” Thursday urged. “We’ll get him. A patrol’s on its way.” He pressed more firmly on the wound, and Morse cried out, voice raw. The amount of blood was making it difficult to keep a hold on the wound, the shirt slippery under his hands, and he released it for a moment to tear at the buttons and pull the ruined fabric away from the wound. He reapplied the pressure, wincing at the way Morse whimpered. “Sorry,” he muttered, but it fell on deaf ears.

Morse struggled to breathe. Thursday kept up a stream of quiet muttering, pulling on words of comfort from days past of soothing sick, upset children, not once wavering. There wasn’t much more he could do besides try to stop the flow of blood, but there was too much, and it was too fast; already most of the color had gone from Morse’s face, and with it the young man’s lucidity.

Morse had begun to babble to himself, fragments of words that there was no making sense of, alternating between desperation and exhaustion, his addled mind not responding to Thursday’s attempts to calm him. “Just look at me, son, focus on me, quiet now, there’s a good man.” But Morse’s eyes didn’t focus, or couldn’t, skittering around from point to point some area beyond Thursday, a nervous, flickering look about them.

“Fuzzy,” he told Thursday in an imploring tone. His stray hand flailed on the cobblestones, twitching, smearing blood on the rocks. Thursday took it, holding it for a moment.

“Here, you just hold on to me, there you go,” Thursday said. He kept his voice even and warm, and a little of Morse’s tension relaxed. “Ambulance is almost here. Just another minute, now.”

“I didn’t…” Only then did it seem Morse understood what had happened, what could happen. His weak grip on Thursday’s sleeve - not unlike a child clutching the hem of his father’s sleeve, and the thought made Thursday  _ hurt _ \- tightened, barely. His eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry- I don’t want t-”

Thursday didn’t let him finish the sentence, feeling choked up himself at how he was literally holding Morse together with his bare hands, at how easily the young man could slip away from him even yet. “Hold on a moment more,” he repeated, because what else was there to say? “You’ll be fine” was a promise he had already made, one he’d fight to keep with all he had; “I’ve got you” went unspoken and implicit, as it always had; “I can’t lose you” cut too closely to whatever emotion it was that made him feel like he was cracking at the edges, like he’d finally snap in half if  _ anything  _ happened -

“Tired,” Morse sighed. “Feel faint. ‘Ave I lost blood?”

Thursday, surprised, laughed bitterly. “Yes, yes, you have.” The sirens blared nearby, and he glanced over his shoulder to see the ambulance at the mouth of the alley. And then there were paramedics jogging down the alley towards them, and then there were hands pulling him away from his constable, and then there was nothing left to stare at besides a puddle of blood, dark and wide, and then there was the strange, intense urge to wash it all away, because it was too precious to just leave dripping from the wall and settled in the divots between the cobblestones, and then there was a hand on his elbow tugging him towards the ambulance, and there he held Morse’s hand all the way to the hospital.

***

Thursday didn’t know if it was the crick in his neck or the soft rustling nearby that woke him.

He groaned, sitting up straight in his chair. The curtain around them was drawn back, revealing the quiet activity of nurses moving from bed to bed and the beginnings of other patients waking. Early morning sunlight slanted through the large windows in the wall opposite, glinting off the polished tiles and making Thursday squint slightly.

He looked back at the bed, at the reason he had slept in such a painful chair all night. Morse looked entirely too young against the white sheets, curled slightly on his side with his arms tucked tightly into his chest. He was sleeping peacefully, face relaxed, hair mussed from shifting in the night. He’d slept fitfully for several hours after the surgery, unstable from the blood loss but “on the mend,” as the doctor promised. Thursday reached over to pull the blanket tighter around his shoulders. Morse exhaled lightly at the action, relaxing even more into the bed. His fingers grasped lightly at the hem of the blanket, and Thursday closed his hand around them.

“There, that’ll do. You rest now.” And he deserved it. Patrols had searched the nearby neighborhoods for a man of Morse’s description, and the gun in his possession was more than enough to bring him in. Already Thursday’s men were combing through the alleys behind the buildings, on the lookout for whatever had motivated their suspect to return to the crime scene. No doubt they’d have something more for the evidence locker soon.

Thursday was reluctant to let go. Simply feeling the warmth of Morse’s hand under his was enough to ward away the fear he’d felt upon finally seeing how much blood Morse’d lost. He only released it when Win bustled in behind him, humming lightly. “Here, help me tuck this ‘round him, he looks so cold, the poor thing.” She unfurled a blanket from her arms, moving to draw it over Morse’s sleeping form. “What did the doctor say?”

“He’s to be on bed rest for a good while, either here in the hospital or at home with someone minding him.” He tried not to feel  _ too _ satisfied at the way Win’s eyes narrowed.

“Well, we could put him up for a bit,” she replied, a soft look on her face as she smoothed some of the hair from his forehead. “Fond of getting himself in scrapes, isn’t he? Could use some minding.”

“That he could, love,” Thursday said. He settled back into his chair, allowing himself a small smile at how Win shushed Morse as he stirred slightly. “That he could.”

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this whole thing at 2 am and then my computer crashed and i lost it because i was being big stupid and was writing in NOTEPAD and so this is the second version of this and also tanks to wren for helping me thru the worst 40 minutes of my life


End file.
